London mayor commits £10m to cut dig disruption

The Mayor’s Infrastructure Coordination service has secured £10 million to reduce the amount of time and disruption caused by infrastructure providers carrying out street works in London.

The scheme is designed to aid coordination between utilities, transport services, contractors, telecoms, regulators and other infrastructure providers to reduce interruptions from essential planned works.

Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, committed £10 million to the fund to reduce delays associated with roadworks in the capital.

The Infrastructure Coordination Service (ICS) is a collaboration between City Hall, Transport for London (TfL), utilities and telecoms companies.

It undertakes long-term planning and works to resolve infrastructure challenges that may impact developers and reduce roadworks.

Basil Scarsella, chief executive of UK Power Networks said: “UK Power Networks recognises the importance of minimising roadworks for Londoners as we undertake our critical work making sure we have the electricity infrastructure in place to support the city in years to come.

“The Mayor’s Infrastructure Coordination Service is playing a crucial role helping us to collaborate with other infrastructure providers, and we look forward to scaling up this collaborative work together.”

The ICS uses scheduling data to identify where companies could overlap work and ensure roads do not need to be dug up twice. Each year, more than 160,000 street works are carried out in London.

The new funding will in part be dedicated to coordinating utilities’ regular processes to find and navigate past potential hurdles.

Since it launched in 2019, the service cut roadworks by 1,254 days by collaborating between the providers across London boroughs.

It goes beyond coordinated work between TfL and utilities to identify areas that utilities and others can work together better on complex projects that may be harder to coordinate.